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Iraq and Kurds fail to agree on budget, oil
By Abdel Hamid Zebari
AFP
ARBIL, Iraq
Petroleumworld.com 12 08 06
The prime minister of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region said on Thursday talks with the central government on budgets and oil had failed, further threatening the unity of the fragile country.
"I hope matters do not get worse," Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told a news conference in the regional capital Arbil after returning from the national capital Baghdad.
"If we had reached an agreement on the budget, the oil law, and the share of the provinces from oil sales, that would have been a major achievement."
But Barzani said he hoped these problems could be overcome with dialogue and he expected the discussions to resume within days.
In meetings with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, Barzani discussed how much income the Kurdish region should be allocated from the whole country's oil sales, while at the same time maintaining its freedom to sign separate exploration deals.
Under the constitution, all parts of Iraq are allocated a proportion of oil sales, the country's main hard currency earner.
"The government was intending to grant 13 percent from the budget to the province but we told them that was not enough," he said. "They should grant 17 percent."
At the same time, the Kurdistan Regional Government should still have the freedom to sign oil deals with foreign countries and keep the proceeds for itself, he argued.
"It would be impossible to hand over the signing issue to the Baghdad government.
All contracts should be signed in the province. All contracts signed earlier shall be put into implementation," Barzani said.There would be no problem for a representative of the Iraqi government to be present at a signing, he said.
In recent years, a number of consortiums of small oil companies have announced substantial finds in the three northern Kurdish provinces of Iraq and have signed deals with the local government -- something Baghdad has called illegal until new oil legislation has been passed.
International experts estimate that the Kurdish region may contain reserves of 3.6 billion barrels.
There was also no agreement over implementing Article 140 of the constitution, which envisages a referendum for certain parts of Iraq to join the Kurdish region, including the ethnically mixed oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Following Iraqi government criticism in September of separate Kurdish oil deals, Barzani threatened that the Kurdish people might "reconsider our choice" to be part of Iraq.
Also in September, Kurdish president Massud Barzani forbade the display of the national Iraq flag in government offices.
AFP 07 1512 GMT 12 06
Copyright© 2001 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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